A Compendium and Bestiary of the Unusual and Bizarre.

This isn’t part of an old man, this is the naked mole rat! A sort of shaved rat, actually not so much shaved it does have a few whiskers, a sort of badly shaved rat. To be fair he’s not shaved at all, nor indeed is he a rat, he certainly looks like he’s lost his towel though…

Naked mole rat: not an old man's tallywhacker

These short-sighted rodents live underground and are radiciovores, meaning they survive by nibbling on the roots of plants. Though once in a while they turn coprophagic, you really don’t want to know what this means… oh ok, you want a clue, copro means poo – phage to eat … told you.

... a delightful brunch

Though it’s not just the good looks and poo-eating that get these chaps into the Proceedings of the Ever so Strange.

The naked mole rat is one of the only animals to feel absolutely no pain. What’s more they can run just as fast backwards as they can forwards. They are the world’s longest living rodent, and one of the only cold-blooded mammals. This is all terribly terribly bizarre stuff but it’s still not the strangest thing about this guinea pig in the buff.

What is oddest about this decidedly odd chaps is that they behave like ants. Like ants, the naked mole rat lives in a big nest who all work together as a community. What’s more at the centre of that community is a big fat blobby queen that has all the babies.

Some of the older, larger mole-rats in a colony act as soldiers. In additon to defending themselves against predetors, more-rats sometimes launch hostile takeovers on their neigbours, either occupying their excavated tunnels, or makign off with younger pups.

Kidnapped pups are raised as slaves, and grow up to tend to the needs of the qeen and colony in a manner identical to that of the native workers.

The mole-rats do not recognize individuals by smell or some such. When you introduce foreigners into a colony, they are readily accepted. When two colonies expand into each other’s area, the animals will fight fiercely though, sometimes taking slaves.